The Young Americans for Liberty publish a magazine titled “Young American Revolution”. For their March issue, they asked me to create a cover illustration for an article titled “More than Just Nope” about the hard road ahead for limited government, and the dilemma facing the Republican party. They wanted a fork in a road with one direction heading towards debt and destruction, while the other road headed towards peace and prosperity. Armed with this information, I sketched out a couple different thumbnail options.
The client liked the second option best, feeling that it put the subject more front-and-center. Since the sketch was fairly small, it needed to be redrawn.
I made some minor adjustments from the original thumbnail, like widening the fork in the road, and moving the signs from behind the guy to his left and right. I was really unhappy with the guy I had drawn for a number of reasons (help, I’m falling over), so I decided to completely redraw him by modeling him after the organizations Executive Director. Several of the elements, like the buzzard and tank, were drawn separately and added in later.
I brought each of these sketches into Illustrator and began to create the final cover (below).
Here’s a look with mast head and article titles in place:
And here’s a look at the final printed magazine:
The original illustration lines were dropped on top and a layer style was applied just to help the edges pop. Once I had finished it in Photoshop, the left side felt a little empty, so I added in a dead tree, and a murder of crows. I left room at the top for the mast head and along the right side for the mailing address. This was presented to the client as my final draft which they were thrilled with. Best of all there were no changes needed. Final approval was given and they were sent off for printing. I was really quite happy with the final product once it arrived.
